Since its genesis in the 1960s, Pediatric critical care medicine has expanded radically and made significant advances in the areas of lung injury, sepsis, traumatic brain injury, and postoperative care. The evolution of cutting-edge technologies and the understanding of the pathophysiology of critical illness along with the development of the multidisciplinary team have further triggered the growth of Pediatric critical care. We conversed with Simon Lin, Chief Research Information Officer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Sr. Project Scientist of the firm, En-Ju Deborah Lin to review the evolution of modern pediatric critical care medicine and comprehend its growth in recent years.

Provide an overview of the recent developments in healthcare with regards to pediatric healthcare.

Lin: As healthcare has evolved over the years, there has been a constant focus to improve patients’ safety continually. The major challenge in this space is the change of data across multiple hospitals to improve patients’ safety. The variable data across multiple hospitals becomes a significant challenge for physicians during patient safety studies.

En-Ju Deborah: Adding to that, another major challenge is that the contract team agents don’t possess any treatment efficacy; they generally shine up images that help physicians with the diagnosis. Albeit MRI has been there for many years, radiology makes MRI images brighter and smoother and assists physicians in diagnosis. Being a pediatric care organization, we have seen the radiologist putting more focus on it. Several cases depict the long-term effects of particular drugs and their impact on the brain. Adding to this, complying with the healthcare regulatory rules also becomes a significant challenge in the healthcare domain. A lot of aspects revolving regulatory rules need to be resolved.

Take us through the recent tech trends in clinical studies.

Lin: Blockchain is here to stay in the healthcare sector. The opportunity of blockchain is immense, and I can see researchers and physicians undergirding the growth of blockchain. It improves security, data accuracy, and aids in integrating data for more extensive clinical studies.

En-Ju Deborah: Several technology solutions can adhere to the needs of clinical studies. However, it is essential for healthcare aficionados to identify the right partners and stakeholders that can help physicians to work in a collaborative environment. This can happen with blockchain. By identifying the right partners, the tech leaders can bring innovative ideas that speed up the growth of pediatric care. In our institution, we recently had a roundtable conference including tech partners, pharmaceuticals companies, and other representatives from hospitals and consulting firm to talk about the developments that can take place. There is different collaboration happening between companies, stakeholders, governments and CDC partners with commercial vendors to use blockchain for health management and patients’ safety.

How do you overview the future of healthcare with Blockchain?

En-Ju Deborah: The future of blockchain is unlimited. We have already seen CDC and MIT using it for clinical trials. Recently, the National Institute of Standard and Technology has done a workshop on dozens of applications of the blockchain.

Lin: In healthcare, when you deem clinical applications the quality and standard of care cannot be compromised. Technology is skyrocketing with each passing day and healthcare IT has comparatively lagged behind. Hence, the tech-savvy leaders in this domain should focus on investing more on healthcare IT. I see this coming from the researcher’s side. In the clinical field, it is difficult to bring new advances in a flash, and I see researchers doing some incredible work to make these advances. Adding to the blockchain, I also see some other technologies such as Data Science, AI, and other tech trends making their mark in the healthcare domain.